Catch a Falling Cat and Put it in Your. . . .Pocket?

Last night, as the hubs and I were winding down after putting the kids to bed, we heard a series of large bumps and bangs out on our front porch. My first thought was that my Mother's Day gift, a huge hanging flower basket, had fallen. I looked outside to find the screen from an upstairs window had fallen out. I rushed out into the yard to find out which of our mischievous children was responsible, only to find a very frightened kitty stranded on the porch roof. She was meowing in such a mournful way and looking at me as she paced back and forth on the roof, as if I was going to save her. I was just hoping she wouldn't get the idea to jump, in which case I would have tried to catch her or break her fall, resulting in multiple scratches, I'm sure. Luckily she's more intelligent than that. But she wasn't smart enough to go back inside the house.

I had yelled to my husband, "Annabelle is on the roof!", so he had already run upstairs and to the window to try to coax her back inside. I grabbed a bag of cat treats and a can of cat food and ran up to give them to him for bait. He tried the cat treats, but had no luck. Then I opened the cat food and handed it to him, and she came right up to him. He dropped the food on the roof and grabbed the cat - Whew!

But then, since we didn't want an assortment of other critters midnight-snacking on our roof, my hubs had to go back out the window after the cat food can. He slid himself out almost to the point of hanging on to the windowsill with his feet. "Oh, man, this could be bad," I thought, but he snatched the can and came back inside in a flash.

With a bit of comforting, Annabelle and our human children were calmed down. How's that for a bit of bedtime excitement?